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Volume 12 Issue 2 ( April- June) 2023

Original Articles

Profile and outcome of Covid-19 Infections in Pediatric Cancer Patients: A study from a tertiary care centre from North India
Dr. Faisal R Guru, Dr. Anjum Ara Mir, Dr. Taskeen Mehmood, Dr. Shumail Bashir, Dr. Syed Nisar Ahmad, Dr. Saquib Zaffar Banday, Dr. Areez Ahmad, Dr. Haider R Guru, Dr. Ulfat Ara Wani, Dr. Mohmad Hussain Mir

Background: SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of covid-19 infection was detected in China in December 2019 and rapidly spread around the world and was responsible for the ongoing pandemic. Pediatric cancer patients undergoing anti-neoplastic therapy are at a higher risk for Covid- 19 infection related complications owing to their immuno compromised state. This study provides an insight to the factors associated significantly to the Covid -19 infection in the pediatric patients with malignancy and the effect of chemotherapy on the infection in terms of morbidity and mortality. Methodology: This retrospective cohort study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital and SARS-CoV-2 infection was diagnosed on the basis of a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test from a nasopharyngeal swab or throat swab. The data on age, gender, symptoms, diagnosis, length of admission and time to negative PCR were collected from the medical files of all pediatric patients treated for cancer who tested positive for COVID 19 from May 2020 to October 2021. Results: A total of 300 patients were treated during the study period out of whom 46 patients with diverse pediatric cancers tested positive for SARS-COV-2 .Males accounted for the majority of cases, (60.9%) whereas 19 patients were females. The median age at the time of diagnosis was 5 ± 2years. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (30.5%) was the most common malignancy followed by Neuroblastoma (10.9%), Wilm’stumor(8.7%) ,Osteosaroma (8.7%), Ewing sarcoma (8.7%), Non- Hodgkin’s Lymphoma(6.5%), Giant cell tumor (6.5%), Rhabdomyosarcoma (6.5%), Hodgkin’s lymphoma ( 4.3%),Acute Myeloid leukemia (4.3%), Medullobastoma (2.2%) and Retinoblastoma (2.2%). Among patients suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia,53.3% were diagnosed with Covid-19 during induction , 26.7% during maintainance therapy and 20.0% during the consolidation phase. Negative results for RT-PCR were obtained after a mean duration of 15 days ± 1.5 days. Most of the patients maintained an oxygen saturation above 90% whereas the lowest oxygen saturation of 70-75% was seen in 8 patients. Conclusions: Our study concluded that although covid-19 affected the treatment course in a significant proportion of patients admitted for anti cancer therapy but the morbidity was low with no mortality recorded in our subset of patients.

 
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